No Time to Die

On March 15th, 1992, Columbo did something it had never done before: it dispensed with the murder entirely. No Time to Die puts Lieutenant Columbo in the middle of a kidnapping case involving his own family, turns him into the leader of a police task force, and withholds the customary cat-and-mouse battle between detective and villain. It is, for better or worse, mostly worse, one of the strangest experiments in the entire series.

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Peter Falk is still Columbo, of course, but almost everything around him has changed. His nephew Detective Andy Parma (Thomas Calabro) has just married fashion model Melissa Hayes (Joanna Going). Before the newlyweds can begin their honeymoon, Melissa is abducted from their hotel suite by Rudy Strassa (Daniel McDonald), a dangerously obsessed man who has constructed an elaborate fantasy around her. The rest of the episode is a race against the clock to find Melissa before Strassa carries out the final part of his plan.

This is not your father's Columbo

The first thing to get out of the way is that No Time to Die is not really built from the usual Columbo machinery. There is no opening murder (in fact, no murder at all), no carefully engineered alibi for us to admire, no wealthy killer trying to explain away one tiny inconsistency, and no final "just one more thing" trap. The villain doesn’t even know Columbo exists.

That is not an accident. The episode was adapted from Ed McBain's 1976 87th Precinct novel So Long as You Both Shall Live, with a teleplay by Robert Van Scoyk. McBain—better known outside that pen name as Evan Hunter—wrote police procedurals about a whole squad of detectives. That DNA is obvious here. Instead of Columbo peeling away at one suspect, we get phones, interviews, technicians, photographs, warrants, patrol officers, dispatchers and a room full of cops chasing information in parallel.

The result feels less like an unusual Columbo mystery than like an 87th Precinct story in which Columbo has been inserted as the senior detective. That distinction explains both what works and what doesn't.

Truth be told this episode is widely ranked by Columbo fans as their least favorite. I have it ranked 69th myself.

A wedding in the family

The episode opens at Andy and Melissa's wedding reception. This is already unusual territory: Columbo is not arriving at a crime scene in his raincoat. He is a guest. More importantly, he is family.

The script makes Andy the Lieutenant's nephew, and Thomas Calabro plays him as a younger cop who clearly respects his uncle without treating him as a legend. 

Columbo on the dance floor

One of the episode's novelties is seeing Columbo dance with Melissa. When she asks where he learned, he credits Mrs. Columbo and says she wears him out dancing. It is a small scene, but it helps establish that Columbo genuinely likes Melissa. 

That matters later. His urgency in the investigation is professional, but there is a personal current underneath it.

A police family

Columbo's wedding toast contains one of the better lines in the episode: "You're not losing a daughter, you're gaining a police force." It gets a laugh at the reception, but it becomes almost literally true a short time later.

And Columbo's family

This episode gives us the deepest real look into Columbo's family that we get in the series. First off we get definite proof that Columbo actually has at least one nephew - Andy.

In his wedding speech he tells us that Andy's mom was Columbo's sister Mary. So he had at least one sister (and a brother-in-law).

And during the reception he talks with Mrs. Hayes about his wife and reminisces about his wedding. 

All of these folks are family, and would likely know if he was making up fake family members. And at this point no crime has been committed and nobody in the room is a suspect, so there'd be no need to make up fake family members for their benefit. 

Could it be...?

In the marvellous gotcha of A Friend in Deed Columbo flashes a photo that he says is his nephew. The boy in the picture might be 7 or 8 years old and the episodes were 18 years apart.

Could it be that the little boy in the photo was Andy?

The bride disappears

After the reception, Andy and Melissa return to their hotel suite. Their honeymoon never gets started. Strassa gets into the room, chloroforms Melissa and carries her away.

This is where the episode announces its new genre. In a conventional Columbo, we would now settle in with the criminal and watch him arrange the details of a murder. Here the crime is already in motion, the victim is still alive, and every minute matters.

Andy initially reacts like a husband rather than a detective, which is exactly right. Calabro spends much of the episode wound tight, angry at himself and desperate to do something. Columbo, by contrast, is the stabilizing force. He does not become theatrical or sentimental. He simply goes to work. You may notice in the scene where they go to confront Albert Wagner that Columbo twice reaches out to restrain his younger colleagues.

Calabro's performance is fine, maybe even pretty good. He certainly committed to the role.

Glad you didn't go home Bill Bailey

As a Columbo this episode doesn't really work but as a piece of TV it does have a few pretty good performances and I think David Byrd is charming and smooth as the restaurant cleaning guy who becomes a key witness.

Lieutenant Columbo, task-force commander

Watching Columbo run an investigation is probably the episode's strongest idea. We are used to seeing him alone, drifting into rooms, borrowing pencils and annoying suspects. Here we see the authority that must have existed behind that manner all along.

He assigns work, listens to reports, and tries to control the pace. He decides which leads deserve attention and which do not. Peter Falk does not suddenly turn Columbo into a barking precinct captain; the Lieutenant is still soft-spoken and rumpled. But there is no doubt who's in charge.

Goodman and Mulrooney

Dan Butler plays Sergeant Robert Goodman and Doug Savant plays Detective Dennis Mulrooney, two of Andy's police colleagues. They are part of the episode's deliberate shift toward ensemble procedure. Both is capable and effective but neither is allowed to become a rival detective or comic foil. They function as members of the team.

That makes the investigation more realistic than the average Columbo case—but realism is not automatically the same thing as entertainment. The classic format works because Falk can dominate the rhythm of a scene. When clues are being distributed across a squad room, he necessarily gives up some of that control.

Butler and Savant are both pretty good. 

The captain

Lance LeGault plays Andy's police captain, another sign that the story is operating on a larger institutional scale than usual. Columbo has dealt with superiors before, but here the chain of command is part of the texture. The investigation looks and sounds like a department mobilizing around one of its own.

LeGault mostly growls and exhibits more role-power than competence. Unfortunately he sort of plays into a stereotype and his performance is one of the weaker ones of the episode, in my opinion.

Meanwhile, Melissa

The other half of the episode belongs to Joanna Going. Melissa is not simply a package waiting to be rescued. She spends much of the story alone trying to craft her own escape.

A genuinely disturbing villain

Daniel McDonald plays Rudy Strassa without the polish we normally associate with a Columbo antagonist. There is no elegant mansion, expensive hobby or professional arrogance. Strassa is frightening because he is living inside a private romantic story that has almost nothing to do with the real Melissa.

He treats the abduction as preparation for a wedding. He talks to Melissa as though they are already a couple. The mismatch between his courtesy and his intentions gives the scenes an unpleasant edge. When the episode reveals the family trauma behind his plan, it does not make him sympathetic so much as clarify the ritual he is trying to recreate.

And as dark, crazy, and creepy as Strassa is, I have to give McDonald credit - he played it beautifully. He really sells it.

McDonald's highs and tragedy

Daniel McDonald had an eventful private life - he dated Jennifer Aniston for 5 years before she made it big on Friends.

They eventually went their separate ways, and each married other people. Sadly McDonald passed away in 2007 of brain cancer.

The fashion world

Because Melissa is a model, the investigation moves through photographers, editors and people connected to her professional life. Daniel Davis plays photographer Alex Varrick, while Juliet Mills appears as fashion editor Eileen Hacker.

Davis is an especially welcome presence. His performance as Varrick is natural and likeable. Desperately needed in an episode Columbo fans would be struggling to like.

Juliet Mills

Juliet Mills gives Eileen Hacker a brisk, slightly amused authority that fits the fashion setting. Unfortunately she's irrelevent to the story other than as part of Varrick's arc.

Sheldon and Louise Hayes

Donald Moffat and Patricia Huston play Melissa's parents, Sheldon and Louise Hayes. The script largely keeps Louise insulated from the full horror of what has happened, while Sheldon is pulled into the investigation as an anxious father with money and connections but no real ability to help.

One of the episode's themes is that wealth and status mean little once Melissa vanishes. The people who can do something are the cops, the technicians, the witnesses who noticed a small detail, and Melissa herself.

The wrong man

The investigation naturally produces false leads. One of them points toward Albert Wagner, played by Don Swayze. The name probably catches the eye today because he was the younger brother of Patrick Swayze, but he had a long acting career of his own, often playing tough or suspicious characters.

The Wagner detour gives the task force something concrete to chase and shows how quickly a kidnapping inquiry can expand. 

It's also a frustrating moment for the audience since we already know this is a false lead and Columbo is wasting time chasing it down.

And also...

Don Swayze's companion, Samantha, is played well by Siobhan McCafferty who had a very modest career in the 90s, mostly doing daytime TV.

Clues without a gotcha

That changes the function of clues. Classic Columbo clues are often little contradictions—an object in the wrong place, an impossible timetable, a statement that reveals knowledge the murderer should not possess. Here clues are mostly directional. They narrow a search.

The hotel, the people who saw Melissa professionally, the names in records, physical traces and witness recollections all feed the same question: where is she? It is competent procedural plotting, but it doesn't produce the peculiar pleasure of watching Columbo make a murderer nervous.

In fact, and we'll come back to this because it's important, I think the fundamental flaw in No Time to Die is that Columbo and Strassa never meet. We're denied the pleasure of the cat and mouse game between Columbo and confident killer.

Columbo without camouflage

One unexpected consequence of the format is that Columbo has very little reason to play dumb. There is no suspect to disarm. No one needs to underestimate him. He can ask direct questions and make direct decisions.

For viewers who have always wondered how much of the absent-minded routine is genuine, this episode is useful evidence. The little habits remain, but the tactical performance falls away. Columbo is plainly intelligent, organized and decisive.

That does not mean the familiar persona is fake. Falk's best version of Columbo has always mixed real distraction with deliberate pressure. No Time to Die simply places him in circumstances where there's no advantage in pretending not to understand what's happening.

Melissa works the problem

Melissa's best material comes when she stops waiting for rescue and starts treating the room as a problem to solve. A rusted barrier becomes something she might be able to weaken, and she remembers that vinegar can help dissolve rust.

It is not a flashy action-hero escape. That is why it works. She studies what is around her, uses ordinary knowledge and keeps herself focused. In an episode that spends a lot of time showing professional detectives at work, Melissa gets to do some brain work of her own.

No meeting of minds

The boldest structural choice is also the one I miss most: Columbo and Strassa don't get a scene together.

Think about how much of the series depends on that relationship. The murder can be ingenious or ridiculous; the guest star can be warm or icy; the setting can be a winery, a chess tournament or a health club. What holds the format together is Columbo entering the murderer's world and slowly taking control of it.

Here that relationship is absent. Strassa never has to answer one of Columbo's deceptively casual questions. Columbo never gets to watch him improvise a lie. The two principal forces of the story remain on separate tracks until the very end.

The ending

Once the police identify Strassa and locate Melissa, the story turns into a rescue operation. The climax is tense in the conventional television-thriller sense: armed officers converge, Melissa is in immediate danger, and there's no room for the leisurely verbal trap that normally finishes a Columbo.

It is effective enough on its own terms. The problem is that those terms belong to another show. If this had been an episode of Law and Order SVU it might have worked. But...

And also to another Columbo

If you like the police mobilization scene the same B-roll will appear again in the very next episode, A Bird in the Hand.

Alan J. Levi

Alan J. Levi directed the episode and also served as a co-executive producer. This was his third and final time directing Columbo, after Uneasy Lies the Crown and Columbo and the Murder of a Rock Star. The staging here is straightforward and functional, which suits the procedural script. He keeps the police work moving and gives the confinement scenes enough tension without turning them into horror.

It doesn't escape my attention that the three episodes Levi directed are all in my bottom 16.

Robert Van Scoyk

Robert Van Scoyk wrote the teleplay. He was not new to Columbo: he had previously written Murder Under Glass. Here his challenge was unusually difficult—retain enough of McBain's ensemble police story to make the kidnapping work while somehow making Columbo the center of it.

The script succeeds at giving Falk plenty to do. But it's not successful at reproducing the essential dramatic engine of Columbo, because that engine simply wasn't in the source material.

The Ed McBain experiment

Peter Falk was executive producer at this point, and the production acquired rights to two Ed McBain 87th Precinct stories. So Long as You Both Shall Live became No Time to Die; McBain's Jigsaw would later become the 1994 Columbo episode Undercover.

Seen together, those adaptations are fascinating because they show the series deliberately testing how far Columbo could stretch. Could Falk's character carry a story that was not designed as an inverted mystery? The answer is: yes, in the basic sense that Columbo remains watchable—but the cost is losing much of what makes a Columbo episode.

M O N D A Y 1 2: 0 5 A M

One of the clearest visual indicators that this is a different kind of episode is the type-tapping of the day and time on the screen at various points. Not very Columbo-like and for Columbo fans it probably felt especially out-of-place.

And also...

There's an odd audio quirk in the scene pictured just above. Andy has called Columbo because he discovered Melissa had been kidnapped. Columbo is walking towards him down a very long hallway but even from the other end of the hallway you can clearly hear Columbo talking to Andy in a normal tone of voice.

In fact, as he gets closer and closer his volume never changes. Most likely Falk is wearing a mic, but it produces a disconcerting effect on screen.

A different side of Falk

Falk is very good here. That can get lost when the episode itself is being criticized. He understands that the story does not need more eccentricity; it needs authority and momentum.

His best moments are often quiet. He watches Andy carefully. He absorbs information while other people are talking. He redirects the investigation without making a production of it. There is a sense that this is the same detective we have always known, except the stakes have removed his usual layer of playfulness.

So does it work?

As a kidnapping thriller, mostly. As a Columbo, not really.

There are things I genuinely like: Falk's understated command of the task force, Joanna Going's resourceful performance, the glimpses of Columbo as an uncle and wedding guest, and the chance to see how he operates when there is no murderer to charm or irritate.

But every time the story becomes an efficient police procedural, it reminds me of what's been removed. There is no killer's plan to reverse-engineer. No smug guest star trying to stay one step ahead. No recurring visits that grow increasingly uncomfortable. No moment when the murderer realizes that the shabby little detective has been paying attention to everything.

Think about any other episode - such as The Most Crucial Game - and imagine that episode if you take out all of the scenes where Columbo and the killer interact and replace them with scenes of Columbo at the police station thumbing through reports and making phone calls to potential witnesses. Just really isn't as good a show.

And that’s the essence of what Columbo is. The duel between Columbo and killer is what we love, and No Time to Die denies us that.

Just a couple more things…

• It’s good that Thomas Calabro didn’t make his living as a singer.
  
  
• One of the characters that lets down the side is "Tubby Comfort". It's a silly name for a silly character, played rather over-the-top by Cliff Emmich.
  
  
  
  
  
• At the conclusion Columbo says, for no apparent reason, "What time is it?" And the day and time gets tapped out on the screen. I can't decide if that's cute or corny. Maybe both.
  
  
• There's a quick shot of an ambulance racing to the rescue in the run up to the final scene. The driver couldn't resist waving to the camera as they passed.